In our ever expanding world (including waistlines!) the population is just getting bigger and bigger. Diabetes is on the up as well as coronary heart disease, bowl cancers not to mention the plethora of other weight related illnesses. You know you must lose weight and you’ve probably tried a handful of times with little to no success. It is a massive source of frustration, so why can’t you drop fat?
It’s actually reasonably straight forward, but first, you need to know why you are where you are.
Obesity is not caused by carbs, fats, sugars or magic!
Why is it that some people can eat phenomenal amounts of food and stay lean? Why is it that you barely eat and seem to be getting fatter with each passing day and it’s just so damn hard to shift it?
Simply put, it is caused by your body’s inability to use your food as it should be used. Let me try to explain.
A healthy body will ingest food, be it proteins, carbs or fats. Each macronutrient has its own job. Carbs are the preferential fuel source for your body, fats are generally used for hormones, nerves and cell membranes as well as a source of fuel and proteins are used to rebuild our bodies top to toe.
This is not a blog about bodybuilding, athletes or getting ripped as I don’t want to get into the semantics of best approaches for that. It is a totally different topic. I’m talking about the average joe who doesn’t want to be fat and just wants to look and feel healthy and slim.
You have let your life get away from you. You’ve stopped eating proper meals at proper times and, more importantly, you’ve stopped moving. Our sedentary lives and poor nutrition choices are to blame not one particular macro. We eat food not calories or macros. 100g of rice does something very different in my body as it does in yours due to my body being very efficient at dealing with carbs. So, just because I can get lean on 400-500g of carbs per day it doesn’t mean you can.
This is largely down to insulin sensitivity and an active lifestyle. If you eat poorly your body won’t burn the food as it should so you add fat easily. Your sedentary life means there is no requirement to burn food properly and your body is shocking at burning body fat. Essentially, you must teach it to be better at using body fat as a fuel and using carbs properly to help to exercise harder.
When you’re unfit, your body will be running mainly off the sugars you have stored in your muscles and liver, when you’ve run out you stop training. At the beginning you may only be capable of a few minutes of exercise before you stop, you realise it’s too hard and you give up.
If you keep going, keep pushing a little longer your body adapts. Each session you become a little better at using body fat, you go a little longer, your muscles get a little more sensitive to insulin and carbs and before you know it you’re getting leaner. When this is supported by a healthy diet you learn to use the macros as they are intended. You can consume more carbs and fats and get leaner.
The key is consistency and balance. If most people could exercise 3 times per week to an exhausted state and eat 3 good meals per day with whole foods (not overly processed) I promise you it will make a huge impact.
If you’re really out of shape/obese just start walking and build up, but don’t give up.
An example would be 3 sessions of resistance training/circuits/high intensity intervals per week, 30-90 mins each time depending on ability. The fitter you get the more you can cope with.
Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.
An example basic daily diet: – Breakfast- A good bowl of Alpen or muesli with a protein source like 2 eggs or some meat/whey.
Lunch – A decent size jacket potato with tuna mayo and some salad
Dinner – could be some Chilli-con-Carne, rice and some veg.
It’s not ground breaking it’s just 3 standard healthy meals. Limit alcohol and junk and drink plenty of water. If you get peckish have a banana or an apple in between. I promise if you’re overweight and unfit this will work to get a lot of the fat down.
If you would like to discuss diet or training in more detail you can contact me at WWW.FatAlsGym.Co.Uk.
Keep on liftin’
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